Perfect Stranger
by moondusted
Summary: The Lone Wanderer in a series of drabbles.


_Thanks to The Allusive Man for beta-reading!_

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**Author's Note: **I like to write these little pieces so I get to know the characters as I drive them around their adventures. It's also great fun to experiment with styles. So, here is Mick. I called him Mikhail in the game, but I figured people who are called James and Cathrine probably didn't name their son something so fancy. I wanted to write a dozen drabbles, but I didn't quite make it.

**Note: **The title comes from the Deep Purple song. I dislike it's added 'mysterious stranger' connotation, but it fits too well to change.

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**PERFECT STRANGER**

**by moondusted**

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**_101**

In a way, he has never truly been part of the Vault. It's constraints and limits, the suffocating proximity of the ceiling and the walls. Everything is too close, too small and — after two hundred years — too old. He sees the propaganda for what it is and never understands why the others cannot.

Leaving comes as natural as breathing; more so, in fact. Stepping out of the door and into the Wastes, he thinks he has never breathed before at all. The air is dry, abrasive and almost certainly poisonous.

He has never felt as liberated as in that moment.

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_**Nova**

He loses his virginity to Nova the night after he disarms the bomb. After all, she says, the least she can do is offer him a free ride. Though he thinks its less about _disarming_ the bomb as it is a reward for not _rigging_ it. She must have drawn her own conclusions about Burke and the man's utter lack of subtlety when talking to strangers.

Learning of his lack of experience, Nova spends the night — among other things — trying and failing to make him blush. He is the son of a scientist, however, nothing human is foreign to him.

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_**Karma**

No one knows who he is when he is alone, but so many claim kinship. He is greeted by name in Paradise Falls and at the monument of President Lincoln. The ghouls at Tenpenny will hail him as a friend not despite, but because of the blood they shed together. At Rivet City, they greet him with a nod, never seeing the wolf they admit among their sheep.

It's different in Andale and under Meresti station, where they think they know him for what he is. And although the nature of their mistake might be forgivable, it will forever remain false.

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_**Vices/Virtues**

He drinks too much and cares too little. He likes whiskey the most, but when the mood strikes him, he will take anything. Those are the bad days and even Gob will become reluctant to serve him.

On good days, he will remember to be magnanimous and save your village from the Super Mutants or your allies from the top of a hotel. Sometimes — rarely — he will deign to forget to ask for a reward. It's those days when the alcohol tastes bitter in his throat.

He prefers the bad days. It says something profound about him, if he cared.

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_**Giants**

He knows he is nothing but a scavenger, just like everyone else. He might be a better class of vulture, the kind that makes the others turn tail and run from their prize, watching from a safe distance and hoping there will be scraps left when he leaves.

They are scavengers picking at the bones of giants. Those who came before them, in all their glorious doom, they were the better people despite how they fell.

He can't help but imagine the life he would have had, in that other time, as he marvels over the ruins at his feet.

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_**Legacy**

Current date: 6-21-2278

[booting] ANCHORAGE RECLAMATION

Please stand by…

WARNING! Safety protocols offline. Please cease usage of the simulation and contact your system administrator.

[force-booting] ANCHORAGE RECLAMATION

Please stand by…

Simulation in progress!… … … … … …

Simulation powering down… please stand by…

[display] results

Subject… … … … … … unknown

Secondary goals… … 10/10

Squad status… … … no losses

Accuracy… … … … … 98.543%

Chem usage… … … 83.861%

Final score… … … … 72.848%

Recommendation… … highest score since launch, recommend subject [unknown] for Special Operations Training; chem usage exceeds acceptable parameters, recommend mandatory councillor visit

WARNING! HQ mainframe network offline. Log files have not been sent. Please check connections and try again.

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**_Depravity**

He thinks he is in love with Clover, but he knows better than to see it as a pure emotion. He loves how ferocious she is, the way she will launch herself at his enemies, how utterly and perfectly deadly.

A goddess of war, whose leash he holds and can let hang loose or yank viciously. And there she is, full of blood and gore from vanquished foes and she will kneel at his command, open her mouth or her legs.

A part of him despises the notion of slavery, but the feel of her around him is too intoxicating

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_**Advice**

Three Dogs keeps pestering him for an interview. All the Wasteland wants to hear his voice and in the end, he relents simply because it is easier. Maybe he will have some peace afterward.

"So, any last words of advice for those little lost lambs out there?" Three Dog asks at the end of it.

What he wants to say is, "If you get the chance to kill me, take it. I won't give you another."

What he says, instead, is, "Pick your battles, because history won't care for your glorious failures."

It's the truth, too, but hardly his truth.

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_**Water**

In the end, he knows he will never be one of the good guys. The template doesn't fit and he has done too many unspeakable things in the privacy of the Wasteland, but it won't stop him from going down in history as the hero who brought the water back.

He summons an encouraging smile, for his father's sake, if nothing else, and the Pride respond to him as if he were one of their own, as if they wouldn't shoot him the instant they learned the truth of him.

He says, "Once this is over, drinks are on me."

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**End**


End file.
